Shark!
by LoyaulteMeLie
Summary: In space, no-one can hear you whimper...


**Disclaimer: Star Trek (plus all its intellectual property) is owned by Paramount. No infringement intended.**

**Author's Note: This is a follow-up of sorts to 'Bunny'.**

**Beta'd by VesperRegina, to whom all due thanks!**

* * *

It is one of the facts of life that anyone who takes up the sport of scuba-diving runs the risk of encountering a shark.

Trip Tucker was a keen scuba-diver. Prior to taking up his post on board _Enterprise_, almost any holiday time he had saw him spend at least a day on the coast, using a hired boat to take him to some of the most beautiful spots off the Florida shoreline. And, along with the other denizens of the reefs he explored, he naturally saw sharks: blacktips mostly, but the odd nurse shark and a couple of hammerheads. He'd treated them with the appropriate respect and they'd never caused him a problem.

Things hadn't gone quite that simply the day he encountered the tiger shark, however.

He knew they were probably out there, of course. Florida waters with their abundant food supplies attracted quite a few species of sharks – in addition to the local varieties, migratory predators visited, and some of these could be pretty large and dangerous. Men he'd spoken to at the marinas claimed to have encountered the legendary Great White, and he'd seen good-sized bull sharks and lemon sharks taken by prize fishermen – now that the numbers had finally stabilized at a healthy population after the criminally irresponsible mistreatment of the oceans during the 20th and 21st centuries, shark fishing was once more permitted, albeit under strict license.

Tiger shark numbers in this area, however, had been slower to recover for some reason. Occasionally someone would mention that they'd seen one, but the sightings were never substantiated.

Then, on that memorable day, just as he was about to end a happy hour's exploration of an underwater cave with his friend Michael, he'd had the fright of his life.

It had simply materialized out of the blue distance, cruising toward the reef with slow, effortless sweeps of its tail. He'd realized as soon as he spotted it that it was the biggest shark he'd ever seen. It wasn't until it turned to swim slowly along the reef-face that he realized just _how_ big it was. It had to be more than six meters long. And the dappling of sunshine from the surface above played on the blue-gray back, showing up the faint, distinctive pattern of cloudy stripes.

He shrank back inside the cave, frantically motioning Michael to stay behind him. Fortunately, the mouth of the cave was relatively narrow. Which was more than could be said for the mouth of a shark this size.

The shark swam closer. He knew that it could detect the electromagnetic field of his body via the sensory ampullae in its snout. The black eyes moved a little in the huge head as if trying to catch a sight of him, but even if they couldn't it still knew he was there. His hand dropped to the knife strapped to his thigh, but that would be about as much use as a toothpick if this thing was looking for lunch and he was on the menu. _'The trash-can of the seas' –_ that's what the tiger's nickname was. They'd eat anything.

And as a threat to human beings, they ranked second only to Great Whites.

The intention had been there. The great brute had headed directly for the cave, its swim becoming purposeful. Close up, it had blocked out the light. It had nosed at the entrance, trying to turn its great body sideways to fit inside, and thrashing angrily when it couldn't succeed. Three times, four times, five times it had turned away and come back again. On the last attempt it had been so furious that it had bitten at the small spur of rock that blocked its way in – an almost insignificant lump of coral-encrusted stone that was less than a meter in front of his face. And he'd seen the teeth. _All_ of the teeth. He'd half-expected the rock to explode into powder as those great jaws chomped on it. If the shark got into the cave there was nowhere in there that either of them could hide from it.

But the rock had held. And eventually the shark had realized that it wasn't going to get anywhere, and swum sullenly away back into the blue distance. He and Michael had waited a good fifteen minutes to make sure it wasn't going to change its mind and come back again, and then they'd emerged cautiously from the cave and bolted for the boat at a speed that would have risked giving them the bends if they'd been diving at any greater depth.

That had been a few years ago. He'd had nightmares about it for a while and then slowly the memory had faded.

Now the nightmare had come back. The bared teeth. The hunger. The intention. And he was trapped in a steel cave, moving in the vacuum of space, and the predator was loose inside it with him. Admittedly, this time he was unlikely to be torn into pieces and eaten, but the fate awaiting him probably wouldn't be much short of that...

The day after the episode with the bunny-tail, Lieutenant Malcolm Reed had looked up from the weapons console and smiled. "Good_ morning, _Commander!"The tone was affability itself. The smile wouldn't have looked out of place on a toothpaste commercial. But the eyes ... the eyes told a different story.

And the shark on board _Enterprise_ was in no particular hurry to pounce. He'd just swim lazily along, biding his time, smelling the fear. He'd wait until the perfect opportunity offered itself. For days. For weeks. For months, if he had to.

Sooner or later, _the bunny would bite back_.

**The End.**

* * *

**All reviews and comments received with gratitude!**


End file.
